the end is where we begin
by katanafleet
Summary: SHIELD sends Bobbi to South Africa to take out a HYDRA agent who had been leading a gang of the misinformed; Hunter's already there, sent by SAS, blowing the smoke off his gun. He greets her with a cheerful "Hello, sweetheart." Bobbi snarls and stalks out of the alley. The next time they meet there's fireworks.


The end is where we begin – katana_fleet – the end is where we begin – thousand foot Krutch

They meet in a whirlwind of deception and lies.

They part that evening in the same whirlwind, its ferocity dying slowly, but still, at its core, a secret. Secrets that burn and chip away at the fabric of everything they know.

Bobbi takes the intel, gleeful at the victory but hollow when she leaves him still sleeping.

Lance sits on the hotel bed in Bangladesh the next morning, staring at the wall, rubbing his face, wondering what he's gotten into.

They meet again. SHIELD sends Bobbi to South Africa to take out a HYDRA agent who had been leading a gang of the misinformed; Hunter's already there, sent by SAS, blowing the smoke off his gun. He greets her with a cheerful "Hello, sweetheart." Bobbi snarls and stalks out of the alley.

The next time they meet there's fireworks.

Hunter waves goodbye with a sarcastic "Don't die out there, sweetheart."

Bobbi rolls her eyes and nods. "You too."

They meet secretly a few times. Each time the separation is worse and Hunter can admit, not just to himself, that he doesn't want to leave her.

They always part with "don't die out there, okay" because they both like to hear it. It's a bit of a promise they have; they won't die unless they're together. Or they won't die at all.

Finally he quits working with SAS and becomes a mercenary for hire. Finally they end up working together on a job; it's Hartley and Mack and Idaho and the two of them. Izzy sees them together and whistles with admiration. "You're in trouble, Bobbi. That guy's already long gone for you." Hartley always knows what's coming long before they do.

The Mockingbird smirks but doesn't tell her about Singapore.

Or that she's falling just as hard for the short British guy, as hard as he's falling for her.

The next time they meet they get married.

It's Vegas and what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas until Mack sees the new tension and the kissing in the hallway and asks a dubious "did you get… married?" and, upon hearing the grudging "…yes", announces to the rest of the team. Then Bobbi adds it to her SHIELD file—checks "married" and prints "Lance Hunter" and some of his information in the boxes—and Lance struts around calling her "Mrs. Hunter."

In public they're strictly professional.

Of course, they may have run at each other in Chattanooga and kissed full-on in the airport after Hunter experienced the explosions a little too close. They may have yelled at each other for a long time after Hartley missed that bullet only because Bobbi pushed her out of the way and the yelling may have ended in the back of the SHIELD van.

But mostly, they're professional. SHIELD agent and mercenary. Killing whatever they need to; seducing whoever they need to; running wherever they need to.

In private they get to forget.

Bobbi forgets that she's a SHIELD agent of the caliber of Barton, Romanoff, and the Cavalry. She forgets the marks, the missions, and the pain of working for SHIELD.

Hunter forgets that he's a mercenary working for whoever pays the most. He forgets that part of SAS' leadership just exploded in a flame of broken promises and something called HYDRA.

They can just be together.

By the time SHIELD falls, they're divorced.

Like SHIELD itself, their relationship had dissolved from the inside out. Lance found out about Saudi Arabia and Colorado. Bobbi couldn't hide anything after that, could only apologize over and over again, and they pushed each other away, trying to save themselves in the inferno of divorce papers and secrets and betrayals.

They'd been divorced for six months when SHIELD falls. Bobbi and Izzy and Mack are in the midst of it, trying to protect everyone they can, but sometimes they just aren't enough.

She gives Izzy the key ring to give to Hunter. Izzy was the only one who knew about Franny's. Hunter is going to kill her if she makes it out of this.

Bobbi Morse makes it. After it's all over, the new group with Gonzales formed, Izzy tells Bobbi to call Hunter.

She gets a busy signal.

She shrugs in Izzy's direction. Izzy glares. She hates Izzy's glaring. Hunter was always scared of the glares.

She tries again.

Frantic Lance answers. "I was just trying to call you, Bob; are you okay?" Neither can hide the sighs of relief when they hear the other's voice.

They don't make up or whatever Hartley was hoping for, but they hang up civilly.

"Don't die out there, Hunter."

"You too, Bob."

Bobbi certainly doesn't stare at the phone and wish she could call him back, say she's sorry, tell him that she misses him so much and she, heaven help her, needs him.

Hunter certainly doesn't slam his head onto the table next to the phone and sob once or twice, wanting to be with Bobbi, wanting to tell her just once more that he loves—

She doesn't call him back. She can't; she's undercover in HYDRA; no one but Melinda May and Phil Coulson and Robert Gonzales know she's there. Bobbi's high enough in the food chain that Bakshi and Whitehall would personally have her head if she so much as called a number either didn't recognize.

So he thinks she's dead. Mack doesn't mention her, Izzy just hugs him tightly when he tries to ask, and Idaho nearly breaks down. Idaho does think that she's dead.

Here's the thing: he knows she's not dead. Mack doesn't mourn her; Izzy doesn't mourn her; Idaho does but Idaho cried for twenty minutes over that dead cat they found in an alley that one time. And he would know if the love of his life was dead.

He would know.

So he knows she's not dead. But it's easier to think that she's dead; if she's dead she has a reason for not calling him back. He doesn't expect much—he's a self-reliant mercenary with a flair for the dramatic—but he does expect the woman he loves to call him to say "hey idiot, still alive!" with whatever insults she chose.

Right now, he'd take the insults with grace and a grin.

But he knows she's not dead.

General Talbot kidnaps him.

It's mildly annoying.

"I'm just trying to figure out how a guy like you, one of the SAS's finest, winds up running with a bunch of mouth-breathing mercs," the general muses.

"Why does any man do anything, General? I met a girl."

He doesn't know what Talbot thought about that response; probably the general's thinking the worst about him now; but he means Bobbi.

Izzy and Idaho die when the Obelisk emerges. He's left to mourn two of his best friends without her; if she had been alive, Barbara Morse would have come to Isabelle Hartley's funeral. He tries to tell himself that when he's walking away from Jane and the rest of Izzy's family.

She cries for three hours when she hears about Izzy and Idaho. But she has to keep watching over the tiny Jemma Simmons; the HYDRA Mockingbird can't let herself be weak.

He joins Coulson's team. He doesn't really want to; but he wants revenge for Izzy and Idaho. He tells Skye and Trip and Fitz stories about Bobbi, never uses her name, but Mack knows who he's talking about.

He calls her names, demonic beast and all, but never really means them. Deep down. Even though he's still bitter.

Bobbi knows what's happening. She knows that Coulson brought Lance Hunter onto his team. She had to vouch for him. "He's an idiot, terrible person, really; but if you win his loyalty, you've got him forever." She knows that once her cover blows—Jemma's such a terrible liar—she will have to face him again. And she doesn't know how.

He feels a change in the air when Raina blackmails Coulson with Jemma Simmons' life. May and Coulson share tiny smirks when they look at him and somehow he knows that Bobbi's coming. He hears her laughter and Mack's answering gruff tones. He bursts into the room and sees her and her hair is brown but she's alive and she's beautiful—

"Bob?"

Slow exhale of frustration. "Hey Hunter. Nice suit."

"Nice suit?"

And they're back at it again. They both love being back together again; but neither would ever say it. May watches them with the exhaustion of a nanny watching the kids she's not paid enough to care for. Bobbi realizes, again, that when they're together they have the maturity of hormonal teenagers.

They save each other too many times to count.

Each time there's intense stares and, on Lance's part, longing looks, but nothing more than that. It's probably a good thing, they try to convince themselves. They're grenades waiting to go off and when they do explode, they're going to take part of headquarters with them.

Bakshi's consumption of cyanide serves as the lit match on the fuse.

Because they finally get down to the main problem: they can't trust each other. Hunter can't trust Bobbi to tell him everything, and Bobbi can't trust Lance to trust her and support her when she needs it. That's always going to be their problem; unless they both retire to the backwoods of Australia and have only to deal with kookaburras and kangaroos instead of agents and classified information, they're going to have trust issues.

"Will you never trust me?"

Emphatic head shaking. "But I'll never stop wanting to."

Fireworks.

Once again, it begins and ends in the back of the SHIELD van.

Mack asks Bobbi a few days later if she and Hunter are back together. She doesn't really know what to say: "Yes, we're back together, we're still in love and turns out that's not going to change, and did you really like the British pouting"?

She tries to hide thumb drive from him. And it's not really between the two of them: it's just Bobbi. And Mack, fine. And about three hundred more people on a boat in the middle of the Atlantic. But not him. Hunter is unfortunately good at deduction. Always has been when it comes to her.

When Puerto Rico shakes they lock eyes and rush together and just hold each other until it's over. And when it's over, Skye's a mess of guilt and alien contamination and Raina's probably not dead and Trip is dead.

It never stops hurting, losing someone. That evening they remember that. That evening they steal the beer and take it to their room and toast Izzy and Idaho until they can't feel the burn of the alcohol anymore and they're just sloppily kissing, wondering why they decided to take this job.

Eventually they lay the bait for Bakshi. And they remember why they took this job. Bobbi hasn't had this much fun since they were newly married and stalking that mark in Nova Scotia.

He doesn't buy the bloody "support group" deflect for a second. While it would be a great thing to believe that the woman he loves was trying to get some help, actually being in such a support group would be so out of character that it would cease to be funny and he would probably have to destroy whatever person decided it would be a good idea to impersonate Barbara Morse.

But he's learning. She probably isn't going to tell him anything any time soon; he can wait; he can trust her to tell him when she wants to. For now, he has her, and they've never had a healthier relationship.

She breaks up with him.

He's really not surprised. He's upset, but not surprised.

Then Mack chokes him and kidnaps him.

That was a little surprising. He's definitely upset now.

He officially hates his life.

He yells at Mack, "Tell her I take it all back! All the 'don't die out there's!" He doesn't really. He doesn't want her to die.

But he would like her to explain herself.

The woman he loves and his best friend are in a secret SHIELD organization that doesn't like Coulson but wants to be SHIELD but thinks that Coulson's a bad person who doesn't deserve to have the toy called SHIELD. Essentially, they're bitter over Coulson having Fury's special Black Tool Box.

Call him an idiot, but he doesn't trust any of them.

Bobbi lets him go, not thinking that he would actually try to leave the boat. He left the boat.

She returns to Coulson, gets Fury's box, and fights May in one of the worst ideas of her life. That woman likes to kick people in the face just a little too much.

They take over Coulson's SHIELD and the man himself is missing.

Skye is the most dangerous girl Bobbi's ever seen; but heaven help her, Skye's powers are beautiful.

Hunter finds himself back with Coulson with lots of little umbrellas and they're on the run. When Coulson asks how his vacation was, he quips about the cruise ship as a cover but it's just that: a cover. He's in pain. Pain that Bobbi couldn't tell him, that now she's fighting on the other side of the same team, that now they're essentially enemies.

But he's going to stick with Coulson, who seems to have his head screwed on right, despite the weird alien stuff a few weeks ago.

More than bloody Gonzales anyway. More than any of them.

She distracts herself trying to open Fury's box. She doesn't know where he is, if he reached shore okay, if he's been captured and killed by HYDRA. But Bobbi knows that Lance isn't dead. She'd know. In some inexplicable way, she would know if the man she loves was dead.

Eventually they're together again. Back in SHIELD's base.

Because somehow, they always end up back together.

Hunter can't look at Bobbi. Right now, he can't forgive her. She and Mack both lied but somehow it was more personal, coming from her.

Bobbi can't look at Hunter. She feels guilty, yes, for not telling him, but she's not going to apologize for who she works for, even as she slowly loses faith in Robert Gonzales and his leadership. She admits to Mack that she doesn't know how to show emotions like Hunter, like most of them. Hunter keeps his on his sleeve as she buries them. There probably is something wrong with her.

Kidnapping isn't fun.

Bobbi's been kidnapped before. She didn't like it then.

She doesn't like it now, except now it's worse because she let herself be taken this time.

And now she doesn't know what to do. Because she's stuck with a psychopath and a little lost woman who follows his every move blindly. Agent 33 looks up to Ward, trusts him implicitly, and absolutely adores him.

It's the kind of relationship that, unless it's an animated movie, ends in death for one of them or for everyone around them.

In the animated movie, it ends in hugs of reconciliation and promises to lead their little team together. Together forever. Love and peace and friendship together.

It's not real life.

This, here in this basement or wherever she is, is reality.

They can't find her. Bobbi never landed with the rest.

Lance doesn't freak out at all. He behaves normally and coolly and, who is he kidding, he's freaking out.

He calls her phone. "Hey, leave a message at the tone." Beep. "Bob, it's me, please call back." No answer. At least now he's got adrenaline on his side. Everything else—the Inhumans, Skye, the imminent attack on the boat—fades.

Ward tells her about the paralysis and anesthesia and the needles. Agent 33 watches with a slight smile as her boyfriend slowly pushes the needles under Bobbi's fingernails. She hates needles. Hates them, hates them, hates them. Ever since she was a kid, getting shots in the doctor's office. They leave her alone for a while and that's enough to start moving the handcuffs.

He figures out that it's Agent 33 who kidnapped her. He and May get their team. Mission: save Bobbi Morse. Kill Grant Ward.

She breaks free when Ward comes in for some private torture time.

Agent 33 brings the gun.

May shows him the blood and bullet scars on the metal. That's his Bob.

She doesn't even know what Ward did to her knee but it's a raging fire of agony down there.

"She doesn't care if she dies," she hears through the pain. Oh, she does care. Right now, she wants nothing more than to live, even if just out of spite.

They set up the gun just behind her. They rig the firing mechanism to the doorknob. Anyone who walks through that door will be slaughtered. "Brains everywhere," Ward says with a bit of a smile.

"I never wanted to talk to her again," Lance mutters to May. "Now she's all I can think about."

"Love's weird that way." That's May for you. Always to the point.

"I'm not sure it's love. More like a dance of desire, discomfort, and unreliable feelings."

It's love. As much as people like them can love.

Agent 33 and Ward finally leave her alone, chained to her chair with the gun a foot away. The pain threatens to take her under at any moment, to that blessed place called nothingness.

But she can't. She won't let it.

Hunter and May trace her phone and find the building they're keeping her. Pity it's in Spain; Bob always liked Spain. No more vacations to Spain, he would imagine.

She hears his voice in the building. It's fading in and out because of the pain, but Hunter's far away. She has time.

Men are dying in the building, disappearing from the coms. Hunter's looking for Bobbi. That is his only concern.

He's coming for her. And Hunter knows that he'll find her.

She rocks the chair, trying to move it in front of the gun.

Hunter would call her an idiot. Taking the bullet for someone else, someone she probably doesn't know? Idiotic, Bob. Come on, sweetheart, think.

But she has to.

Finally the chair's moving. When that door moves, she will be able to get between it and the bullet. She has to.

She hears him.

He sees the blood on the door. Oh, not her, anyone but her—

She hears him slowly open the door. Oh, not him, anyone but him—

Hunter opens the door and sees her for a split second before—

She thrusts herself into the bullet's path—

Blood splatters on his face.

Bobbi just took a bullet for him.

And there's considerable pain, worse than before, but it doesn't matter because Lance is here, he's unfastened the handcuffs and pulled her into his lap and trying to stop the blood spurting from her chest.

His entire being is screaming, begging her to hold on. He brushes her hair back and strokes her face in a frenzy, talking to her, trying to get her to stay awake.

It isn't really working. The blood is still coming. Her eyes are open now.

She tries to stay awake.

She's conscious enough to see May burst in, to hear Lance yell something incomprehensible at her. But she can't move.

She watches Lance as he tries to save her. She loves him. Loves him so bloody much…

Her eyes close.

Darkness. At last.

He picks her up and, with May's help, gets her onto their plane. But he's the only one who carries her. He doesn't let go of her until there's a medical gurney to place her on. He grabs her hand as what's left of their team try to push him back so they can get the oxygen on her.

She's so still.

Oh, he loves her. He loves her so bloody much.

He doesn't leave while she's in surgery. He stands back and watches in shock while Simmons orders a blood transfusion and x-rays and gets the bullets out and stabilizes her.

He never lets go of her hand.

He's never letting her go again. They're going to be together. Whatever happens, they'll be together.

She wakes up in SHIELD headquarters. She's getting oxygen and her shoulder hurts and her knee feels sedated, the pain just under the surface. There's a presence beside her, that comforting one.

"Hey."

Hunter wakes up slowly, Disney princess style. He looks terrible.

"You're looking better," he says. He's lying.

They insult each other as they always do. But it proves that they're okay. They'll be okay.

Hunter is rambling, he knows it, but he can't stop talking. He insults her a few times, talks about her upcoming surgeries—

"I can't do this anymore," Bobbi says.

Hunter stares at her. He can't tell immediately what she means—SHIELD, her field work, or them?

But she just smiles softly and leans her head up just a little.

It's a kiss not of farewell, or regret, or even just thanks.

Not "I can't do our relationship. Just can't."

Not "I'm sorry, I love you, but I'm done with all of this."

Not even "Thank you saving my sorry life."

It's a kiss of promise and love. That they'll be together, no matter what. No matter what comes their way.

They'll be together.

Because that's how it was meant to be. Right from that first moment they met in the hotel room in Bangladesh. The SHIELD agent and the mercenary.


End file.
